Just after I wrote the last entry, in which I praised Kacey Musgraves as a breath of progressive, fresh air in the smog of conservative country music, I read Allison Glock’s essay about Dolly Parton in “Here She Comes Now: Women in Music Who Have Changed Our Lives”.

Glock bestows very similar praise upon Dolly, painting her as the benevolent rebel I credit Kacey with being, only with a forty-year head start. Did I underrate Dolly by missing that context? I took the morning to investigate, checking out five of Parton’s records, culminating with multiple spins of her masterpiece (and one of two of her albums I already new well), “Jolene”.

I think the difference between Dolly’s progressiveness and Kacey’s is that Dolly doesn’t flaunt it with her lyrics- she proves it just by showing up. Dolly’s persona was a revolution in itself. An empowered woman who broke free of her personal songwriter right before recording “Jolene” to start writing her own songs and sharing her truth with a vast audience. Kacey arrived after the revolution, using the platform offered to her by Dolly and the other pioneers to further advance the rights of her LGBT listeners and young people who still felt constrained by cultures that hadn’t pushed forward as much as others had in the years since Dolly paved the way.

“Jolene” is a great album largely on the strengths of two classic songs- the hard-charging but weary title track and the move-you-to-tears “I Will Always Love You”. Both songs are so ubiquitous as a result of copious cover versions that hearing the original recordings here arouses a nostalgia that’s hard to pin to a time or place. As great as these two songs are, five minutes of bliss don’t make a top-1,00 album. The rest of these tracks are worthy filler, songs that fit like a sequin dress over Dolly’s honey-sweet voice and the down-home pep of her backing band. Closer “It Must Be You” is the best of the rest, its sweet sincerity matching the tone of the hits.

“Jolene” isn’t the consistent tour-de-force “Same Trailer, Different Park” is, but Musgraves hasn’t written an anthem as Texas-sized as “Jolene” or “I Will Always Love You”. That Kacey was able to carry the torch to such heights is largely a testament to the trail Dolly blazed. “Jolene” is the most worthy landmark along that trail.

That’s my 654th-favorite album.

Earlier this week, I recorded an episode of The Maine Show with Ben Sprague in promotion of the book (which you can still buy here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0578468220). Ben asked what genre(s) may be underrepresented on my list and I mentioned that I only included 15 or 16 country albums (it could be as many as 25 if we’re willing to stretch the definition of country).

I don’t listen to much country and when I do, it’s usually because it comes to my attention through some connection to another genre (Bob Dylan, The Byrds, and The Gun Club, for example, all dabbled in country). A rare example of an unabashed country album that found its way into heavy rotation on my speakers is Kacey Musgraves’s debut, “Same Trailer, Different Park”.

If the boots on the album cover aren’t a dead giveaway, the twang that opens “Silver Lining” is- Kacey Musgraves makes country music for country music fans. What sets her apart is the message- one often diametrically opposed to the values with which the American South is commonly associated. “Merry Go ‘Round” attacks southern traditions like marrying young and blindly following church leaders. “Follow Your Arrow” encourages the listener to be herself, regardless of social pressures to conform to a certain standard. “Blowin’ Smoke” attacks cigarettes and their users, adopting the plural first person to avoid preachiness.

The lyrics alone make “Same Trailer” a great album, but it’s the music that makes it a modern classic. Just 25 when the album was released, Musgraves had already been self-releasing music for over a decade. This allowed her to hit the scene fully-formed, self-assured enough to stand up to country hegemony, but down-home enough to win over the same fans whose travails she documents.

My knowledge of both country music and Southern American culture is admittedly limited, probably distorted by pop culture imagery and election maps. Young people in every community embrace progressive values, and the Nashville sound certainly courted fans along the political spectrum before Kacey Musgraves came along.

That said, picture this: You’re an LGBT youth in a town where every grocery store radio station plays country music and every gas-station TV is set to Fox News. Kid Rock’s and Ted Nugent’s hate and bigotry are commonly accepted as one side of a civilized discourse. Now you’re standing at a concert where thousands are singing along with “Follow Your Arrow”, each basking in her freedom to be the person they want to be. Not many musicians are capable of that kind of impact.

That’s my 390th-favorite album.

A few weeks ago, I reported that Sundays are for Chet Baker. This piece makes no effort to rescind that affirmation. After spinning two Chet Baker albums to open this Sunday morning on exactly the right note, I pivoted to Lee Morgan to try to keep that feeling going.

It missed, but in the right direction.

As soon as opening track “The Sidewinder” kicked in, the whole family reacted as I imagine most listeners do. Toes tapped. Thumbs drummed on the dining room table. Lips became trumpets.

It was still Sunday. We still pretended we didn’t have a care in the world (though we’d already returned from a morning Little League game and ushered countless grandparents out the door after some had helped with backyard construction projects). But Lee’s version of carefree (everything’s groovy; come out to play) is markedly different from Chet’s version (let’s celebrate the little things while pining for old times).

“The Sidewinder” is the soundtrack to that movie you remember having loved, but you can’t remember the title. It’s the product of the speakers at the community pool in halcyon days populated with polka-dot bikinis and strawberry lemonades. It’s the song that played in the park between the opening act and the headliner, just before the sun went down over the trees.

The rest of the album is a mix of further moments of Sunday afternoon serenity, often ushered by Barry Harris’s piano, and more upbeat saxophone and trumpet workouts, powered by Joe Henderson and Morgan himself, respectively. “Gary’s Notebook” picks up the pace, with both horns feeding off each other. “Boy, What a Night” even reaches a shrieking crescendo. By the time the hard-bopping “Hocus-Pocus” spins to a close, you’re checking to make sure you’ve set your app to repeat so you can get one more crack at “The Sidewinder”.

That’s my 325th-favorite album.

Collaboration albums occupy a unique space in music criticism. The primary motivation, it seems, for two artists to collaborate on an album is likely either lust for album sales by consolidating fanbases or a genuine desire to work with another person or group an artist respects. Rarely does a collaboration aim to make a definitive statement or define an era through an artist’s eyes. It follows that collaboration albums don’t usually top critics’ lists of a year’s best albums.

To wit, my top 1,000 albums between 1957 and 2017 include exactly ten one-time collaborations between two musicians or groups. None of these is among my 250 favorites.

What this analysis misses is that not every great album is the result of an artist intending to make a definitive statement or define an era. Often, a group writes some songs because they like writing songs, records them because they like playing music, releases them because they want people to hear their music and/or they like making money, and the album just turns out to be a classic.

Forty years after his hospitalization for drug addiction broke up The 13th Floor Elevators, Roky Erickson had spent far more time battling physical and mental illnesses than making music intended for public consumption when a unique opportunity presented itself. Erickson met Okkervil River’s Will Sheff, an Austin native and a fan, and Sheff agreed to produce some sessions for which he’d lend Erickson his band. With Okkervil at the peak of their powers, such an opportunity, I imagine, was hard to pass up.

“True Love Cast Out All Evil” sounds nothing like The 13th Floor Elevators. Most of it doesn’t sound much like Okkervil either. Rather, it sounds like an immensely talented musician making his first album on earth after spending the last fifty years in space. His psychedelia is traded for a dash of folk, a little bit of country, and some straightforward rock and roll. He pleads for his life with a judge and a lawman. He asks for help from various entities, divine and corporeal. There’s suffering and despair behind these tracks, but the music itself is loaded with hope.

The title track couldn’t be much simpler, but it hits hard. “Goodbye Sweet Dreams” would fit on an Okkervil River greatest hits collection. “Think of As One” is a man surrounded by friends helping him cling to his sanity. The whole album seems to celebrate the fact that it was even possible to make after so many decades of travails.

That’s my 653rd-favorite album.

Which is the best Kendrick Lamar album?

This question is as complex as they come, but I’m about to grace you with the unequivocal, incontrovertible, unassailable truth.

They all are.

If you’re looking for a document of the times- bold storytelling that challenges conventional wisdom and exposes truth- each of Kendrick’s albums is better than the prior one, peaking with the Pulitzer-Prize-winning “Damn”. If you want great beats and raps- homage to classic hip-hop while pushing the genre ever forward- “Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City” is the apex, with small steps back over the next two.

In between those two masterpieces lies “To Pimp a Butterfly”, perhaps the strongest combination of those two elements. Opener “Wesley’s Theory” and “King Kunta” suggest we might be in for a fun ride packed with car-rattling bass and singalong raps, but both are multi-part suites that expand from “at first I did love you, but now I just wanna f***” to an accounting of Lamar’s travails and successes via extended metaphor built on Alex Haley’s rebel slave Kunta Kinte. In between, “For Free?” is balls-out slam poetry reframing the politics of gender. This isn’t just a joyride.

Over 29 minutes, Lamar explores institutionalized racism, gang violence, police brutality, fighting one’s inner demons- topics that span states, nations, and eras- somehow keeping the whole thing grounded in a time and place- 2015 Compton.

“The Blacker the Berry”, “Alright”, and “i” are all classics that would stand out as the crowning achievement of most rappers’ careers, but on “To Pimp a Butterfly”, they’re all just part of the exercise. Every song treads more ground than we’ve been programmed to believe a hip-hop song is capable of covering. Dr. Dre and Compton’s G-funk ancestry are certainly launching points, but Kendrick proves himself capable of so much more that no one is thinking about the past after finishing a listen.

Each of Kendrick Lamar’s last three albums is an era-defining statement, the type of record that proves the power of music as perhaps the highest form of artistic expression, while at the same time making all other music feel trivial. In the middle of that run is “To Pimp a Butterfly”, a record that doesn’t rank as my favorite Kendrick Lamar album, but one that few other musicians could dream of making.

That’s my 42nd-favorite album.

“Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness” was released in 1995. To me, it’s the soundtrack of 1997. I was never out in front of social trends.

That The Smashing Pumpkins were ever a social trend is something of a miracle. Their lead singer had a voice like a cornered animal. They dabbled in so many genres that they never spent more than a few minutes tethered to one. The second-biggest single of their career starts with a deadpan acknowledgement that “the world is a vampire”.

Despite all this, The Pumpkins were huge. That cornered animal, Billy Corgan, was a wizard with a guitar or basically any contraption that emits sound. Drummer Jimmy Chamberlain may have been more skilled at his craft than anyone else in his generation. More importantly, the band’s hyper-jaded worldview followed a road paved by Nirvana straight into the soul of a generation of teenagers whose only scout badges were for sarcasm and ennui.

So why is “Mellon Collie”, the Pumpkins’ third studio album, among my favorites? It’s hard to call it a hallmark of any genre, as the alt-rock label so often assigned to them is broad enough to house Hüsker Dü and Hootie and the Blowfish and welcomes The Wallflowers and Ween. I know all the lyrics from years of screeching along in my ’88 Corolla, but I couldn’t synthesize them into any kind of coherent message beyond “don’t care about anything, except someone named Lily and maybe ‘the girl I’ve loved all along’ cited in ‘Muzzle'”.

I think I love “Mellon Collie” because The Smashing Pumpkins didn’t need to be everything to everyone, or even anything to anyone. Billy Corgan loved music and his band and this weird little niche he’d carved out that seemed to resonate with young people despite not really being for or against anything. Debut album “Gish” was the band’s straightforward introduction, equal parts accessible melody and shredded solo, with weirdness stopping by only for the occasional cameo. “Siamese Dream” was the masterwork, sprawling-yet-somehow-focused, adjacent to recognizable radio, but daring enough to be “alternative” and deft enough to be an instant classic.

“Mellon Collie” was the two-hour indulgence only a band with a “Siamese Dream” in its oeuvre is allowed. Misfit ballads rub elbows with scorched-earth metal. Full orchestras swing by while other tunes are held aloft by nothing but a bongo and an awful voice. “1979” is a nostalgia exercise that borders on pop; “X.Y.U.” is screamed nonsense you’ll sing along with years later; “Thru the Eyes of Ruby” is all the awful, beautiful excess of prog rock loaded into a 7 1/2-minute “centerpiece” dropped 80 minutes into the album.

There are misses among the hits. Every double album has misses. What sets The Smashing Pumpkins apart is the talent that justifies the sprawl. They do prog well. They pay proper homage to classical. They’re a credible metal act. They write a worthy pop song in any time signature. You and I might agree that most of these songs are great and some of them are bad, but I bet we don’t agree which are the misses. That may be the mark of a justifiable double album.

That’s my 274th-favorite album.

It is a popular opinion that each of Sharon Van Etten’s five studio albums has been better than its predecessor. I happen to agree that her last two, “Are We There” and “Remind Me Tomorrow” each represent growth on the foundation established by her earlier work. That foundation, though, starts with 2010’s “Epic”, a worthy entry in its own right.

“Epic”, ironically, runs a scant 32 minutes over seven tracks. While closer “Love More” and centerpiece “Dsharpg” may border on epic individually, the album is small. Released right on the heels of her debut LP, “Because I Was In Love”, Van Etten may have felt pressured to get something out quickly to a growing audience. I prefer to think she saw value in brevity and saw fit to release a measured record on which every note counts.

And it does. The intimacy that would come to define her later work is present in spades on opener “A Crime” (“I’d rather let you touch my arm until you die”). “Save Yourself” and “Don’t Do It” build to powerful crescendos with memorable hooks. The aforementioned mini-epics stretch out Van Etten’s composition skills and demonstrate her uncanny ability to convey a lot by saying a little.

The haunting “Peace Signs” served as my introduction to the album and is nearly worthy of top-1,000 status on its own. No moment on “Epic” is less than essential listening. While future albums offered more simply by running longer, “Epic” is the perfect starting point for someone wanting to get into Sharon Van Etten.

That’s my 911th-favorite album.

“Ramones”. “Never Mind the Bollocks”. “The Clash”. Critics love to heap praise upon pioneering punk albums written and performed by men.

The only advantage any of these records has on Pretenders’ self-titled debut is that they came first. All were recorded in the late 1970s, while “Pretenders” was released in 1980. None of the men can match Pretenders in depth, consistency, or ability.

So many emerging musical genres and subgenres represent reactions to the direction of popular music. Punks like Ramones and The Clash told the world they were sick of Rush and Yes stretching songs out to 10 or even 20 minutes with complex arrangements and pretentious multi-part suites. The stripped-down, three-chord sound so in vogue in the late seventies was conceived with the listener, not the critic, in mind. Of course, critics loved punk, so the sound got angrier and more defiant, fit for the basement, but not the FM dial.

Enter Pretenders. The first half of their debut is loaded with punk credibility. “Precious” and “The Phone Call” introduce Chrissie Hynde’s signature snarl. “Tattooed Love Boys” is hard, fast, and flippant. They’re a punk band, and a worthy one.

The second half is a whole different animal. “Stop Your Sobbing” brings all the snarl and defiance, but loads it with joy and vivacity. “Kid” is built on that unforgettable riff and boasts Hynde’s chops as a singer, not just a rocker. “Private Life” is richly textured and contemplative without pretention.

“Brass in Pocket”, “Lovers of Today”, and “Mystery Achievement” comprise one of the great closing suites of any album in any genre. They’re all worthy of radio, but fit for the basement. “Brass” is the karaoke staple. “Lovers” proves the musicianship the punks go out of their way not to show off. “Mystery” brings back the punk attitude that opened the album, but closes it with an instrumental workout that proves this band has everything. The men can play, the band feeds off each other’s energy, and they share the songwriting credits, but this is Chrissie Hynde’s band, and this is her masterpiece.

That’s my 84th-favorite album.

The only version of Madonna’s “True Blue” currently available on Spotify is a recent remaster on which most songs are extended with techy flourishes. This is frustrating because, since I first listened to the original version five or six years ago, I find myself returning to it with surprising frequency. Those flourishes distract from what was already a pretty great album.

One might argue that constantly updating Madonna’s work makes sense. It’s hard to picture eighties Madonna spending countless nights in the studio trying to get every note right on an era-defining album. Her game was hit singles. Well, hit singles and videos, publicity, fashion, acting, controversy… She defined an era as a cultural icon while much of the general public that loved or hated her probably couldn’t name two of her albums. Over the next decade or two, when music and fashion changed, it was just as likely to have changed because of Madonna as Madonna was to have reacted to the change.

That same argument might conclude that 1986’s “True Blue” is not an album, but a collection of singles packaged for radio and video and the speakers of every club and every department store at the same time. The nine songs were written by five different songwriters and packaged by Sire with MTV and the whole world in mind.

To reduce this record in such a way is to miss how much it has to offer. “Papa Don’t Preach” was Madonna’s most mature statement to-date. “Live to Tell” was her first great ballad. “La Isla Bonita” represented her brilliant first step into world music. At first listen, non-singles like “Where’s the Party” and “Love Makes the World Go Round” feel like filler, but they fit the album’s themes- freedom, defiance, and the control over one’s life that comes with growing into an adult.

Given the way it clashes with many of the choices closer to the top of my list, it would be easy to dismiss the inclusion of “True Blue” in my top 1,000 as a token nod to an influential artist whose sound defined her era. If that’s your impression, give it a spin- particularly if you have access to the original version- and I think you’ll agree with my assessment- these great songs add up to a great album. Whether recorded by a once-in-a-generation icon or a one-hit wonder, it’s just great music.

That’s my 571st-favorite album.

Where does “Out of Time” fit within R.E.M.’s discography?

Their first four albums are loaded with post-punk, underground street cred. “Document” and “Green” have iconic singles and quirks that define a band introducing itself to mainstream audiences. “Automatic for the People” is the second-phase masterpiece. “Monster” is the arena-sized banger. “New Adventures in Hi-Fi” is the mature entry from the elder statesmen.

“Out of Time”, in some quarters, is a punchline. After releasing a classic album every year for six years, the band disappears for three years and comes back with KRS-One’s cringeworthy rap and Kate Pierson wailing about shiny happy people?

To me, “Out of Time” is a reckoning with fame. After a whirlwind stretch that started as an underground experiment blending The Byrds with Wire and ended with massive worldwide tours with tens of thousands singing along with “It’s the End of the World As We Know It” and “Stand”, R.E.M. had time to regroup and decide who they wanted to be in the nineties.

They decided, it seems, not to commit to being anything specific. Michael Stipe funk-rapping and yelling “DJ sucks” during “Radio Song” may reek of cultural appropriation today, but in 1991, it was a turn no R.E.M. fan saw them taking. Imagine listening to that song for the first time and fearing the whole album would sound like that, only to fade into the plucky mandolin of “Losing My Religion”? “Low” opens with solo bongos and builds so slowly that fans of 1988’s “Green” might not have believed they were listening to the same band.

The jangle-pop recipe that won R.E.M. fame isn’t absent here, but it doesn’t dominate. “Belong” is the alt-country song John Cale never wrote. “Me in Honey” is the Kate-Pierson-backed pop song that should have gotten “Shiny Happy People’s” radio play. And dirge-turned-gospel-tune “Country Feedback” might be the best song the band ever recorded, an anthem for a dark room after so many celebrations of light.

One might conclude that “Out of Time” is great despite its missteps. I prefer to think that the missteps are part of what makes it great. A decade-old band that could have retreated to their old formula, content that their eighties hits could fill a lifetime of concert playlists, decided to branch out and see what else they were capable of. As it turns out, they were capable of putting out another decade’s worth of fantastic music.

That’s my 497th-favorite album.